All leaders are a work in progress, and the best ones get better with time because they are relentlessly focused on their development, and constantly looking to improve. Coachability is a critical ingredient of leadership potential.
Although there are no bullet-proof recommendations for becoming a better leader, scientific research provides a great deal of evidence on the pathways you can follow to upgrade your leadership talent. Here are a few recommendations to consider.
Practice active listening
Historically, we thought of leaders as top experts who possessed the answers to most problems. However, as Professor Amy Edmondson points out, in the knowledge economy expertise is distributed, so the role of leaders is to hire smart people and ask them how to solve problems. This involves not just active listening, which has been found to predict better leadership performance, but also active questioning.
Become the chief question officer
Today’s leaders are more likely to succeed, not based on their ability to have the right answers, but on their willingness to ask the right questions. The best way to think of leaders is as chief question officers.
Asking the right questions is more of an art than a science, but it generally improves if you ask open-ended, broad, naïve (non-directive), and uncomfortable questions, defined as those which may tell you what you need to rather than want to hear.
Being a chief question officer is also a great way to establish psychological safety, because it fosters open discussion and promotes the habit of speaking up in your teams. Human beings want to be seen and heard.
Find a coach or mentor
Although it is possible to improve your leadership skills by yourself, you are much more likely to succeed if you have the support from someone who understands both leadership, and you. Whether this means a professional coach or a mentor, there’s no substitute for having an outside perspective on you, plus someone who can partner with you to help you resolve your challenges and problems.
Research shows that coaching and mentoring significantly improve the performance of leaders. In our own experience, which combines many years of mentoring and coaching people, as well as being coached and mentored by others, it is much easier to accelerate your development when you find expert support.
Enroll an accountability partner
Irrespective of whether you find a coach or mentor, finding someone who can hold you accountable—and help you hold yourself accountable—will significantly improve your development. This is no different from sharing your New Year’s resolutions with others, or having a personal trainer at the gym. Change is hard, but it is made somewhat easier if you enlist others to monitor your progress and exercise some healthy pressure on you.
Make a conscious effort to inspire people
When people come to see you (whether on Zoom or a physical office), aim to leave them more inspired when you finish speaking to them than when they came to see you. Even when we deliver a different view or course correct action, we can leave people inspired about what’s ahead and their ability to contribute.
It does not mean we as leaders agree with everything or let poor work pass. It means we provide the feedback in a constructive way and people leave feeling valued and ready to try again. Ideally, they will leave with a sense that you have helped them to get better.
Hold others accountable for their actions
As human beings, we value fairness as an intrinsic trait, and when leaders don’t hold everyone on the team to equal accountability for their commitments or actions, it raises a question about the leader. Fairness is not treating everyone the same, but as they deserve.
It is all too common for leaders to adopt populist tactics where the focus is for them to be liked, or adopt hurting people’s feelings. However, nothing will annoy high-performing employees more than your failure to address poor performance. And, contrary to popular belief, the best way to create a culture of trust and transparency in your team is to hold people accountable. Celebrate real successes and condemn avoidable failures.
Choose to teach vs. tell
Great leaders are very similar to great teachers. Whether through experience of expertise, they play an active role in improving other people’s knowledge, performance, and experience. Others can learn from what you’ve gone through if you choose to take the time to share your experiences and the why behind your coaching as opposed to: “Do this because I said so.” In this fashion, you accelerate the experience of your team vs everyone needing to get the same experience.
Harness the unique strength each person brings
The art of great team building—as the science to effective teaming—starts with understanding each person’s talents deep down. So, find something in each person on your team that brings unique value and focus on that attribute.
It’s easy for us to like to spend time with people like ourselves with common interests or similar styles, something managers do all too often. Yet value is often found in our differences both from ourselves and across a team. Seek out unique differences from each team member and leverage that difference for the whole.
For example, some are pragmatic and see the value in planning, others are risk-takers and can quickly connect dots and find courage to act. Together, pragmatism and risk-taking often result in success. Great teams are rich in cognitive diversity, but it takes great leadership to turn these differences into a powerful synergy.
Invite your team to know you
Trust is a fundamental pillar of leadership, yet it is sadly in short supply. If you want to be a better leader, you need to ensure that your people trust you—and one of the best ways to achieve this is to invite them to truly know you. This means knowing you as the person who is a leader, rather than just the leader. This means opening up to them and displaying more than the archetypal, professional, work persona. Understanding who you are as a human and enabling them to connect with you on a human and humane level, is how you harness trust.
A final point to consider: The best way to improve is to experiment, assess, and reframe. None of our suggestions are guaranteed to work. Think of them as guiding principles that ought to be tested, tried, and analyzed.
Ultimately, there are many more ways to evolve as a leader. Embracing curiosity, an experimental mindset, and the humility to acknowledge that something isn’t working will significantly enhance your success chances.
Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic is the chief talent scientist at ManpowerGroup and a professor of Business Psychology at Columbia University and University College London. He is the author of Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders? And How to Fix It.
Becky Frankiewicz is the president of ManpowerGroup North America and a labor market expert. Prior to that, she led one of PepsiCo’s largest subsidiaries, Quaker Foods North America, and was named one of Fast Company’s Most Creative People. Find her on Twitter @beckyfrankly.
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